Bill James ranks Rockies' young players second in the game

TUCSON — Analyst Bill James took inventory of baseball’s young talent in his new book, and the Rockies impressed him quite a bit. They finished second in the rankings, behind only the Tampa Bay Rays. Mariners pitcher Felix Hernandez topped the list as baseball’s top young player. Troy Tulowitzki is the highest-ranking Rockie at No. 17.

“We begin by assigning to every player in major league baseball an “Inventory Value”,” said James, who just released the Bill James Gold Mine 2010, “based on his age and major league performance. We figure two scores for every major league player, an “Established Value Score” and a “Youth Score”, then we put these together into a “Youth/Value Score” or Inventory Value.”

James is a deep-thinking statistician who set up to create a science of baseball in the 1980s, an objective knowledge that assigned value to players. In his new book, Inventory Value Scores were also given to the 50 players designated by Major League Baseball in January, 2010 as the best prospects in the game. By counting all players with Inventory Scores of 70 or more, and counting 15 players for each team, James, who works for the Red Sox, lists the 20 “most valuable properties” among young players in the majors (with ages in parentheses):